When the Arab Spring took hold, protestors in the region discovered their most powerful weapon was neither a gun nor a charismatic leader. Instead, the lightening-fast, lassoing force of the Internet brought together hundreds of thousands. In response, fearful regimes cut off Internet access.

Volunteers from around the world sprung to the rescue of information-stranded activists. Groups began to devise ways to get demonstrators connected to each other and the Internet. One such organization is the Open Technology Initiative, part of the New American Foundation, a nonpartisan research group based in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. State Department awarded the group a US$2 million grant to develop innovative ways to sustain an Internet infrastructure in virtually any type of environment. Dubbed "Internet-in-a-Suitcase," by newspapers, the project basically aims to pioneer ways to make the Web available anywhere with added security layers, even in the event of an official shutdown.

Josh King is the lead technologist for Open Technology Initiative, and speaks to Arabic Knowledge@Wharton about how Internet-in-a-Suitcase works, and how his group is working to protect Internet freedom for people in the Middle East and domestically.

An edited transcript of the conversation follows.

Arabic Knowledge@Wharton: Can you explain what is Internet-in-a-Suitcase?

Josh King: First of all I'll explain the context of how that phrase came about. It's a term that was invented during the formulation of a New York Times article. We call it "Commotion Wireless." It's a software project, not necessarily a particular piece of hardware. The whole idea of this project is to create a set of software packages that could be used on a variety of devices, in the event of a crisis where the Internet shut down and national borders closed. It's software that can build an infrastructure out of devices that are already accessible in the area.

Arabic Knowledge@Wharton: So your group works more on the software that goes into laptops, cell phones, thumb drives, etc., to build an Internet infrastructure. Is that the idea?

King: Well, yes. Let me explain a little more of the history of the project and what it's intended to do. The particular program at New America Foundation that we're a part of is the Open Technology Initiative. The purpose of this program is to utilize and advocate the use of open-source hardware and software in society because we believe that it's something that has immense potential for empowering individuals.

We're also involved in projects in Philadelphia and Detroit to build out public computing centers and broadband adoption programs. To facilitate that project, we started developing a particular customized set of software based on all the stuff that the open-source community has been working on for a long time.

And then Egypt happened. We saw all these activists on the ground desperately needing tools to communicate with each other and with people outside of their country when the Internet was shut down. We were trying to think of what we can do to help those people on the ground. And lots of people all over the world were focused on the same issues. What we realized is they needed local infrastructure to allow them to communicate when the Internet is shut off. We also wanted to make it more secure so that activists under threat can have a reasonable degree of safety when utilizing these networks.